Recently I have been discovering what perfect love is.

When someone doesn’t trust you even though your love is perfect for them, it feels like betrayal.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they hid. They realized they were naked, that they were vulnerable. They felt in that moment that something was missing. They feared judgement because they had stopped trusting God’s intention towards them and wanted to know good and evil, as the Devil promised them. 

They stopped trusting that God actually loved them.

I think that’s where we often resort to the safety and false stability of this world instead of living in openness and vulnerability.

Shame came upon them when they disobeyed God.

God didn’t give them this “rule” to be mean, He only gave them this guide to say “LOOK I’ve given you the whole garden, everything you could ever want, but just not this fruit”. What God was saying was that MY HEART TOWARDS YOU IS GOOD! YOU CAN TRUST THAT! It’s not that I’m depriving you, it’s that I am protecting you because when you know that you are actually NAKED, you will experience shame….when in actuality EVERY PART OF YOU is perfect. 

BECAUSE when you are vulnerable, it’s actually perfection. But when you eat this fruit, you’ll think vulnerability and nakedness is shameful.

Sin is separation from God. At the heart of sin, it’s not that you are doing something wrong, it’s that you’ve stopped trusting God’s heart for you. The tendency in that action is that “God I don’t believe your intentions toward me is good, I don’t believe you are a good father so I’d rather walk a path that hurts me than believe that I am made righteous by your blood and walk with you”.

But God says EVEN then, my grace is sufficient for you. 

When we are sin conscious, we keep living a sin filled life, but when we realize Jesus died on the cross for ALL of my sins, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds and we now walk with clarity that GOD says I’m righteous and I no longer need to hide.

I no longer need to hide when I know I am pure in God’s eyes.

I no longer need to feel ashamed when my vulnerability and nakedness is perfect to God.

I no longer need to hide how I feel, even if it sounds negative because GOD loves the REAL ME!

I can COME out of hiding.

This is what LOVE is. There is no FEAR in love because perfect LOVE casts out fear. On this trip I have been STRETCHED in my love for people. I realize that I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT love because the more GOD stretches me, the more I see God’s HEART for people.

His LOVE really has no bounds. He is not offended, He is not mad, He is not mean. He only loves. He loves vulnerability though. Vulnerability is the heart of connection and relationship. When there is no vulnerability there is no possibility for love. 

When there is no trust, there is no possibility for growth in a relationship. When someone doesn’t trust you it means that they’d rather fear that you’ll judge them than trust that you actually love them….and that really hurts. Because it shows they really don’t know you.

But all the more it challenges me to forgive and continue pressing forward.

There is a time and season for everything. Sometimes you need to let go and sometimes you need to hold on. It’s important to know when you need to release someone to God and just allow God to do His work in them.